Skibell discusses religion, the Jewish experience, and the writing of his third novel.

I really loved writing it, but in terms of complexity it was beyond anything I'd done before. It's like a bar bet: write a novel about Sigmund Freud, Esperanto, and the Warsaw Ghetto — oh, and throw a dybbuk into it. But the love story ties everything together.

Laughing in the Face of Evil (On the Shortlist for the Sami Rohr Prize, Joseph Skibell Uses Writing and Farce in the Face of the Holocaust), by Laura Hodes, The Jewish Daily Forward, published May 18, 2011, issue of June 3, 2011.

The Jewish Book Council is also pleased to announce Joseph Skibell, author of A Curable Romantic (Algonquin Books), is the 2011 runner-up and recipient of the $25,000 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature Choice Award.

The reviewer aptly summarizes Okrent's book. See comments, especially mine. I compliment Okrent's book, then amplify on Esperanto, on two points: (1) Esperantists do not all agree that the adoption of Esperanto inherently fosters world peace; even Zamenhof's argument was more complex than that; (2) Esperanto grammar is likely to continue as is in formal written and spoken usage, even if informally certain rules get violated, specifically omission of the accusative marker.

LIBERECANA LIGILO, Bulteno de la Liberecana Frakcio de S.A.T., Nos. 49, 50, 63, 64, 66, 67, 1987(?) - 1989, 86pp, a libertarian Esperanto magazine: 99, in PP 1488. - I haven't tried to list the contents but would gladly microfiche a contents listing of ALL issues of this magazine if an Esperantist supplied me with it in photo-ready form. It might encourage some more people to take up Esperanto AND microfiching. - J.Z.

There is an interesting web site hailing out of Britain called Jewdas, subtitled "radical voices for the alternative diaspora". The contributors tout a countercultural version of Jewishness as an alternative to both Zionism and traditional religiosity. There is much of interest here, but for our purposes, I call your attention to this essay:

Mr. Trotsky is skeptical about some contemporary propaganda in favor of Jewish "peoplehood", deeming it a dubious ideological metaphysical concept as problematic as nationalism or race. More importantly, he delves into the actual diversity and hybridity of real Jewish history and existence, and wonders what a unifying conception of Jewishness could possibly be. The readers' responses are also quite interesting, and in the process, the delineation of the question becomes refined.

Interestingly, this very question was debated over a century ago when a definable ethnic culture or meta-culture was easy to pinpoint, though even then the defining criteria of peoplehood proved to be elusive in the case of the Jews. One very interesting intervention, which is not brought into historical specialist or popular discussion as much as it should be, was that of L.L. Zamenhof, whose claim to fame is the creation of Esperanto, but who also went through a fascinating evolution in his engagement with the Jewish question perplexing Eastern European Jews. Zamenhof was an early proponent of Zionism, first recommending a settlement in the USA, later ceding to the Palestine option, and eventually categorically rejecting the whole project. Zamenhof also published a project for the reform and standardization of Yiddish, also later abandoned.

Ultimately, Zamenhof set his hopes on the reform of the Jewish religion itself, in a doctrine he called Hilelismo. Here he makes his most forceful arguments, mercilessly demystifying the notion of Jewish peoplehood, while posing the very questions now being asked in an entirely different historical situation. To learn more about this, you can follow the links on this blog. The key blog posts are:

Hilelismo was not Zamenhof's final formulation.While he sought to bring Eastern European Jewry into the 20th century, creating a modern people out of a "pseudo-people" nostalgic for a religion and a homeland it could no longer believe in (or at least the intelligentsia could not), Zamenhof generalized his religious reform program to include all who wanted to participate in a universal, common alternative religious practice, while recognizing or maintaining their inherited religious traditions if they so chose in a non-absolutist, non-theistic fashion, somewhat akin to Ethical Culture or Unitarianism. He dubbed his revised religious doctrine Homaranismo (not strictly translatable, but meaning considering oneself a member of humanity) which, along with his thinking about Jews and about Esperanto itself, continued to develop until his death in 1917.

This interview with Gabriel Kuhn, a scholar of anarchism and Gustav Landauer, amplifies on Landauer's irrationalism I alleged in my previous post. And Landauer's primitivist, organicist, mystical tendency is exemplified in his attitude toward Esperanto:

DN: Difference is a key word for Landauer. For example he vehemently opposes Esperanto for trying to unite humanity with one language. He makes an almost Tower of Babelesque critique.

GK: That’s a good example of Landauer’s opposition to rationalist measures of bringing people together. I guess Esperanto was to him a cold, mechanical idea of providing some kind of common structure of finding one another. Rather, people best do so through cherishing their own cultural traditions, expressions and language.

The idea of a homogenous socialist utopia was not something that appealed to him. If you’re not able to embrace all cultural forms that human kind has produced: you cannot embrace all of human kind, you cannot establish socialism. His idea of difference goes beyond a mere concept of tolerance. Socialism has to ‘grow’, that’s a word that appears often in his writings, it has to grow from the diversity of human beings and cultures that make up humanity.

There are extensive discussions of Harrison's Music Primer and Pacifika Rondo, mentions of La Koro Sutro and Esperanto translations of Harrison's poems, with citations of Harrison's fulsome praise for Esperanto. Issues surrounding "the meeting of East and West" are also analyzed. Note also the extensive bibliography. Here are a few items of interest:

Kim, Young S. “Constructing a Global Identity: The Role of Esperanto.” In Constructing World Culture: International Nongovernmental Organizations Since 1875, edited by John Boli and George M. Thomas, 127-48. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.

Mi trovis unu verkon de Gustav Landauer en Esperanto, ĉe retejo por Interlingue/Occidental! (I have found one translation of Gustav Landauer in Esperanto, on a site otherwise dedicated to the artificial language Interlingue/Occidental):

Landauer himself vehemently opposed any use of Esperanto. See his essay “Lernt nicht esperanto!” in Die Freie Generation, November 1907, translated and published in an anthology of Landauer's writings:

This essay is a rejoinder to Pierre Ramus, who advocated Esperanto in the October 1907 issue. Ramus responded to Landauer. Landauer never altered his view. In April 1917 he lauded Martin Buber for "opposing a Dutch initiative demanding the establishment of an International Academy to develop a common global language."

In this essay, Landauer makes two main points, one characteristic of his reactionary mystical philosophy, another far less ridiculous. Landauer counterposes the natural and the artificial, the latter being equated with the state, an artificial monstrosity that obstructs the voluntary union of humanity. Esperanto is thus by analogy a repressive instrument akin to the state. Landauer condemns uniformity in favor of diversity. Apparently, he would not be convinced by the advocacy of Esperanto as an auxiliary, second common language.

Landauer also argues that artificial creations lack the capacity to generate novelty, that they can only regurgitate old thoughts. Furthermore, artificial languages lack nuance, and lack a relationship to the tacit and unspoken that accompanies all communication.

This leads in to this more interesting objection: that Esperanto would be dangerous for practical communication because the commonality of linguistic form disguises the lack of commonality of intended meaning. Landauer argues that a French Esperantist really thinks in French, a German Esperantist in German, etc. Better people should be consciously aware of their inability to communicate than to suppose they do when they don't. The only communication that is possible is shallow and banal, nothing beneath the surface could ever be communicated. And again, Landauer stresses the importance of nonverbal communication.

This does raise a genuine question, but with the dogmatic assumption that the potential obstacles are insurmountable, that no social stabilization of meaning has ever come about or nuance expressed. In 1907 the language was still in its infancy, or perhaps its adolescence, but clearly there was real communication, and already a body of translated and even original literature. The first international conference had taken place in 1905. Esperanto had already penetrated into China and Japan. I suspect there is a lack of sustantive documentation on the extent to which cultural differences and linguistic interference may have caused problems, but it is wrong to assume that such problems are insurmountable.

The anarchist movement has always been all over the place philosophically and ideologically. I regard it as incurably backward and childish, but I do credit it for giving much more serious attention and support to Esperanto than any other tendency within the socialist camp. Anarchists have generally been supportive of Esperanto, so Landauer may have been an anomaly, and his attitude may have been connected to irrationalist or organicist tendencies one finds elsewhere as well. This may be true of the communist Antonio Gramsci, who opposed Esperanto when it became popular in the Italian working class movement following the first world war.

This is an interview with Holocaust survivor, Esperantist, and poet Julius Balbin, with samples of his poetry, which he wrote in both English and Esperanto, largely about his experiences in Nazi concentration camps.

I met Balbin at least once, I think it was at an Esperanto meeting in New York City in 1987. I had been forwarned that he was moody, but in fact on this occasion he was quite jovial. At this meeting he recited from some sketch he had written about Esperanto grammar and was quite humorous.

Balbin was invited to participate in a symposium on Esperanto and the Holocaust on December 5, 1995 at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, organized by the Esperanto Society of Washington, but it turned out that he was unable to make it.

2011-05-08

"My dream goes further. I should like the seed of universal culture to be scattered, from the very beginning of education, among the pupils of the primary and secondary schools. Above all let me suggest that throughout the countries of Europe an international language should be one of the compulsory subjects of study. Such international languages (Esperanto, Ido) have already attained something very near perfection; and with the minimum of effort the international language could be mastered by all the children of the civilised world. Not merely would this language be of unrivalled practical value throughout life. It would further serve as an introduction to the study of foreign languages and of their own national tongue; for it would make them realise, far better than any express instruction, the common elements in the European languages and the unity of European thought."

SOURCE: Rolland, Romain. "On Behalf of the International of the Mind" (March 15, 1918), in The Forerunners, translated by Eden & Cedar Paul (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920).

While I do not think very highly of the intellectual culture of anarchism, anarchists made an undeniable contribution in radical education. Esperanto often featured prominently in their offerings. Here is one example.

I would argue that many of the anarchist schools at the beginning of the twentieth century were at least as teacher-centred as the progressive schools. La Ruche, Sébastien Faure’s school at Rambouillet in France, much admired by Emma Goldman (1907: 390ff.) had the following timetable:

Aside from the first essay, this is mostly the story of Eugène Lanti and the Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda[SAT = World Anationalist Association]. Poulson ends his story in 1937 with Stalin's liquidation of the Soviet Esperantists, whose leader Ernest Drezenwas himself guilty of dictatorial behavior and the attempted disruption of SAT. The adaptation of Soviet Esperantists to Stalinism did not save them. Soviet (specifically Drezen's) behavior mentioned herein pertains to and was characteristic of the "Third Period" of the Third International. To what extent Drezen's behavior was self-motivated or the result of a process of corruption by the Stalinist system should be examined. In any event, these essays are only sketches of the relevant history.